Criteria for Selection of Medical Care Facility Among Outpatients of Tertiary Level Hospital

Lee, Sook Ja; Bae, Sang Yul; Choi, Nam Ki; Ahn, Do Sub; Lim, Jong Moon; Kim, Jong Ho; Nam, He Sung; Shin, Jun Ho; Sohn, Seok Joon

Abstract

It is imperative that university hospital have to make management for patient satisfaction. Furthermore, increased patient's requirement for qualified hospital services also repress the hospital management condition. Therefore there are increasing interest and need for information on health care consumer with the significance of hospital marketing and strategic planning being increasingly emphasized. This study was conducted to investigate the criteria for selection of medical facility among outpatients of tertiary level hospital according to characteristics of health care consumer. For this study, we have analysed outpatients from one university hospital located in Kwangju. To obtain the data, we have carrited out personal interviews with patients who visit the outpatient clinics using a structured questionnaire. The results were summarized as follows; 1. Around 40.6 percent of the visits to university hospital wanted the refer-record by themselves. 2. The criteria for selection of medical facility were good medical staff(49.5%) and good medical equipment (21.0%). When considering the criteria for selection in to two factors, namely quality or convenionce factor, quality factor was the major contributor. 3. There was no significant difference on the criteria for selection according to the demographic characteristics except annual average income. 4. There was no significant difference on the criteria for selection according to the issue of the refer-record. The results of this study, despite some limitation, showed almost patients who visit to outpatient clinics of university hospital have visiting motivation to high quality medical care. These results can be used as baseline data for marketing and strategic planning of hospital management.